Samsara, Inc. (IOT) priced its long-awaited IPO at $23 – the top of its $20-to-$23 range – and sold 35 million shares on Tuesday night (Dec. 14, 2021). The IPO, dubbed “the deal of the week,” raised $805 million. Samsara’s IPO was the standout on a busy night for IPO bankers, who raised a whopping $2.3 billion with the pricing of eight deals – two IPOs and six SPACs. Samsara’s stock opened Wednesday (Dec. 15, 2021) on the New York Stock Exchange at $24.90 – up $1.90 or 8.26 percent from its $23 IPO price – and hit an intraday high at $25.25 before easing back to trade at around $24.02 at around 2:46 p.m. EST. Samsara’s stock closed at $24.70, up 7.39 percent on its first day of trading. (Editor’s Note: This column was updated throughout the day on Wednesday to include the latest news on Samsara’s IPO debut.)
Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Allen & Co., RBC Capital Markets, Wells Fargo Securities, Evercore ISI and William Blair were the joint book-runners of Samsara’s IPO.
“This is the swan song of the year, as far as big IPOs go,” a veteran IPO trader said, ahead of Samsara’s pricing. “Hope we will get some stock – and I hope it will fly.”
Samsara says it pioneered the “Connected Operations Cloud,” which lets businesses and government agencies manage their vehicle fleets and operations with an eye on improving safety, efficiency and sustainability. Options available to Samsara customers include dash cameras with AI vision and dual-facing dash cameras (used to monitor distracted and drowsy driving). Samsara’s customers include ABF Freight, the cities of Boston and Fort Lauderdale, and Windy City Limousine, according to the company’s website.
The pricing at $23, the top of its range, gave Samsara a valuation of about $11 billion.
Six SPACs & An Italian Biotech
Four of the six SPAC deals were upsized at pricing on Tuesday night. Proceeds from the six SPAC IPOs totaled $1.47 billion. (For SPAC IPO details, please see: IPO Calendar and click on the hyperlink of each SPAC’s name to get to the individual company’s IPO Profile.)
Besides Samsara, an Italian cancer biotech priced its small-cap IPO on Tuesday night. Genenta Science S.p.A. (GNTA), based in Milan, raised $36 million by upsizing its IPO at pricing – 2.4 million American Depositary Shares (ADS), up from 1.61 million in the prospectus, and 720,114 ordinary shares. The IPO price was US$11.50. Each ADS represents one ordinary share.
Roth Capital Partners was the sole book-runner of Genenta Science S.p.A.’s IPO. Maxim Group LLC was the co-manager.
Genenta’s American Depositary Shares opened at $10.05 on the NASDAQ, down $1.45 or off 12.6 percent from their $11.50 IPO price, in their debut on the NASDAQ on Wednesday; the ADS then regained some ground to close at $11, down 4.35 percent, on the first day of trading. The slide from the IPO price marked Genenta as a broken deal.
Genenta Science S.p.A. is developing Temferon, a stem cell therapy to treat glioblastoma multiforme, the most common and the most aggressive form of brain cancer.
The Ferrari family’s affiliates were among the early investors in Genenta Science S.p.A., the prospectus says.
Busy Week Before Christmas
IPO bankers’ spreadsheets must have looked busier than Santa’s in this week before Christmas. (Santa’s slide down the chimney is inked in for Saturday morning, Dec. 25, 2021.)
On Monday, a SPAC priced late Friday night (Dec. 10) started trading: BurTech Acquisition. On Monday night (Dec. 13), two small-cap IPOs were priced – Fresh Vine Wines, Inc. (VINE) and Sidus Space (SIDU) – as well as two SPACs. Fresh Vine Wines’ stock tanked on its first day of trading on Tuesday, losing 29.5 percent from its IPO price to go down in the IPO history books as a broken deal. In contrast, Sidus Space shares blasted off – popping 143.8 percent in their trading debut.
On Wednesday night, six deals are on the pricing radar. Three of those deals are SPACs. It’s possible that more names might pop onto the pricing roster tonight (Wednesday, Dec. 15, 2021) as bankers race to get things done before the Christmas holiday week.
Stay tuned.
(Never trade on proposed symbols. You might wind up owning something on the OTC Bulletin Board.)
Disclosure: Nobody on the IPOScoop.com staff has a position in any stocks mentioned above, nor do they trade or invest in IPOs. The IPOScoop.com staff does not issue advice, recommendations or opinions.
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